


Systems Check

by catty_the_spy



Series: #verse [10]
Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Gen, Psychological Trauma, sentient alien starships, traumatized sentient starships traumatizing its occupants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:46:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catty_the_spy/pseuds/catty_the_spy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camille makes lists during the day and flips switches at night. For the most part, she’s keeping it together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Systems Check

**Author's Note:**

> for the hc_bingo prompt “hostile climate”. This took longer than it should have; for that I apologize. All my explanations would be so many excuses. The best news is that it exists to more than just me. And that I managed to squeeze it past a thousand words. I think.
> 
> I know I said about finding more about Rush’s thing. It is coming, as much as anything is coming. It’s just that this got written first. I think we can all agree I am terrible at planning ahead.

Camille is starting to think that her dedication to lists and schedules is becoming unhealthy, but right now – with no way to contact earth, and no one there waiting for her – it is all she has.

She’s fine, though. She’s lonely, and the ship’s issues are taking a toll on everyone, but she’s coping well.

She has two sweaters to go with the outfit Col Young found for her on the Pittsburgh planet. She’s reading through “The Swiss Family Robinson” for ideas. Perhaps she’ll find something she can use, some hint of plants to look for.

She has the skeletons of a plan for future honey-wagon shifts, and she’s revising duty rosters again. When she walks to her desk to work, she sees the picture she drew, with the boat she’d forgotten, on the beach she’ll never return to with the woman with whom she’s no longer in a relationship.

The repair robots were trying to be thoughtful when they preserved that picture. They thought it was _beautiful_. She needs to take it in the spirit it was given.

 

“You know what I want?” Camille says. She’s sitting across from the colonel at dinner.

“A second pair of shoes?”

Both of them are feeling the wear in their shoes, the holes, the fragile tearing heels.

“Books. Not just poetry, but _reference_ books. I keep thinking, if earth can’t give us specialists, they can at least give us books.”

Young sighs. “Anything would be better than what we’re getting now. I’d read ye old giant list of trees if I could get my hands on it.” His expression turned wistful. “At least we have Swiss Family Robinson. Can you imagine finding a rubber tree?”

Camille huffs a laugh. “If we find a rubber tree I might actually cry.”

They eat the night’s main course – a thick soup with chunks of meat and various potatoes, and a beautiful and very nearly overpowering burst of salt. The room is leeching the heat, so they eat quickly, and Camille burns her tongue. It’s as grey and bland as pretty much every meal they have, but the salt makes all the difference.

She doesn’t say anything about the stiff and careful way he holds himself, and he doesn’t say anything about her pale face and the bags under her eyes. They have an understanding.

Dr. Rush, with an irony that ought to make the universe collapse, looks at them both and says “You look fucking terrible.”

She laughs. Young hides his smile behind a spoonful of soup, and the resulting wince is very real.

Dr. Rush sits at their table. A few months ago, he would have left in a huff; he wouldn’t have come over at all. He seeks out the contact now. It’s the only good thing to come out of the forty hour disappearance he and Young shared.

Rush curls an arm around his bowl and slouches over it. He sits very close to the colonel.

“I’m glad you’re eating,” she says, when what she means is “I’m glad I’m not alone.” “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over the duty roster while we’re all together.”

Young nods, swirling his tea in his mouth. This smile she hides.

 

She teaches her class to make socks. The yarn they’re using comes from the cotton plants. It’s plain and un-dyed, a simple dirty white. She used to pretend that she was at a base on earth, and that when the class was over she’d go home, make spaghetti, and argue over furniture with Sharon.

She knows better now.

Instead, she thinks about flax, and rubber trees, and shoes. Offworld teams might benefit from steel-toed boots.

She needs to standardize the teams soon, now that she has a better idea of who works together well. Later.

“A lot of people have trouble with heels,” she says. One thing at a time.

 

Her bed is nice. Big for one person, but she’s still not used to sleeping alone.

She has an extra blanket made of animal hide – furry gingermint and musk scented animal hide. It keeps her warmer at night than wearing all of her clothes to bed.

She’s going to recommend the gingermint herb to the tanning crews. Maybe she’ll use it on her laundry too.

It’s not lavender, but it _is_ relaxing. Strong enough to cut the stale air of the ship, and gentle enough she doesn’t sneeze every time she walks into her room.

That night she dreams she’s in her kitchen, turning things on and off. There’s a system to this that she can’t quite grasp, a meaning that lurks at the edge of her vision, and the more she grasps at it the further away it runs. On, off. On, off. She says the names under her breath as she touches each item. Kitchen timer on, off. Light switch on off. Oven on, off.

Eventually she focuses on the dangling meaning so hard that she wakes up.

She pushes her hair out of her face.

The dream will be back. It always is.

 

Camille walks into the mess at six fifteen, her notes under one arm. She has a few issues that she needs to share with Colonel Young and Dr. Rush, but getting them all together is like herding cats. It’s best to be prepared.

Breakfast is sweetened porridge, made from the forefathers of a grain that everyone hopes will thrive in hydroponics. Colonel Young is already there, asleep next to his bowl. Rush is nowhere to be found.

It’s interesting that the effects of Destiny’s mental tampering show up in different ways. Camille slept less; Young slept more.

He wakes up easily enough.

“I think Becker could heat that up for you.”

He shakes his head. “Nothing in there worth heating up. What time is it?”

She tells him at the same time that he remembers his watch. He taps his spoon against the bottom of his bowl.

“Another push is too risky, what with…” he waves his spoon around in a gesture Camille takes to mean all of Destiny’s issues.

“Yes?” Camille pulls out her notepad, runs her fingers over the stitches that make up the binding before she opens it. “Do you have any areas of interest for _after_ we rejoin the seedship?”

“Managing resources brought over by the seedship will be top priority, but there are a few areas in the layout that would be worth looking for.”

Camille nods. “Will we need a console for this?”

“Later,” Young says. “This is just a rough outline.”

They spend thirty minutes on the list, most of it used to argue the merits of a potential manufactory versus a storage room that may hold essential supplies. When they’ve come to an agreement, they’re interrupted by Atienza and Patterson, who don’t know whether to address their problem to Camille or the colonel.

When that’s taken care of, they move on to TJ’s request for enough space for her physick garden.

“The best place would be the dome. Unfortunately, we still don’t have an accurate layout.”

Young scratches his head. “Do we still have a copy of the original? We can start from there to give TJ an idea of the space she’d be working with. In the mean time we can adjust one of the stations in hydroponics-”

“Do we have the room for that? We’ve already turned half our glass jars into flower pots. We shouldn’t promise her the space if we can’t deliver.”

“I’m spending a shift down there this morning; I’ll check it out.”

He rubs a hand over his eyes, and she catches a glimpse of the webbing between his fingers.

On, off. There’s something here that she’s missing.

 

Meetings with Telford have become so frustrating that Camille doesn’t bother to attend. Instead, she continues to work on the duty roster.

The next time Young falls prey to whatever alien induced autoimmune disorder he has now, she’ll push the meetings off onto Rush. Telford never has anything new to say, anyway; at least putting him in the same room as Rush would result in something entertaining.

What is _happening_ in the Milky Way? Earth won’t tell them anything. What is the point of communicating with Earth if Earth gives them nothing – no sources, no information…nothing.

Camille takes her frustration out on the new honeywagon detail.

There are six crew members she can’t find a placement for. She’s tempted to shove them all onto honeywagon out of spite.

Tea helps. She drinks more than her fair share.

If she could just get rid of this headache, she could think. But. This is all she has to work with. She forces herself to hold it together.

She has to lead by example, after all. Who else will?

 

The dream comes again, as it always does. She claws through layers of plaster to reach the switch she knows is on the other side. She needs to turn it off. She’ll die. She’ll die if she can’t turn it off. She’ll die to turn it off; she’ll die if she does. Her nails snap and break, and the plaster worms its way underneath, into the soft fragile skin that her nails can no longer protect, and still she claws and claws, leaving streaks of flesh and blood in the gaps.

It’s the pain that wakes her. She jolts upright, her hands held stiff. They look wrong. The nails, the skin…it’s wrong. Too perfect. It should be nothing. She should see the bone beneath – she had, she can feel it, she should see the blood, but the hands in front of her eyes are whole.

Slowly, Camille stretches her fingers wide. There’s no need to hold her hands in stiff agonizing claws. The pain is in her mind.

She takes the scream that’s been building in her throat and swallows it down.

Camille focuses on her breathing. She can’t panic. She can’t _let_ herself panic. She rubs her hand over her blanket – pressing the backs of her fingers into the animal hide to remind herself that this is reality, that her fingers are whole, that she is _fine_. There isn’t room to be anything else.

When she’s feeling more like herself, Camille pushes her hair out of her face. She’s shaking. She makes herself stop.

What is she missing? What is the ship trying to tell her? Camille is certain that it can’t just be a random projection of the ship’s insecurities, no matter what Rush says. It’s too specific. Destiny is trying to tell her something. It has to be.

The ship can’t just be torturing her for no reason. She just needs to understand.

 

Camille walks onto the bridge with dark circles under eyes. Young stares at her. “You should go back to bed.”

She gives him a flat look. “You’re a hypocrite.”

He nods, and offers her the command chair.

 

Camille stops in a hallway. There’s a hand on her arm.

It’s Sergeant Greer, frowning at her.

“Is something the matter?”

“You’ve walked through that door three times,” Greer says. He lets go of her arm.

She looks over her shoulder.

She’s in a corridor she doesn’t recognize, outside of a door she doesn’t remember opening. She has no idea where she is or where she might be going.

“The colonel says not to travel alone.”

Camille nods. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

She tries to hide how shaken she feels, but it’s not likely Greer was convinced.

 

Her fingers – her fingers are breaking down to the bone, and she is alone, she is so alone, she has always been alone and no one understands

If she can

If she can just turn it on again... She turned it off she must turn it on she must turn it off she must turn it on she must turn it off on off on

“Stop!” Camille shouts to her empty room, to her hands that are whole, to the ship that won’t get out of her head. “Do you think you’re the only one who’s alone?”

She doesn’t get an answer. Not that she expects one.

 

”I think Destiny is the wrong name.”

Young raises his eyebrows. His eyes are unfocused. “What would you call it?”

Camille shrugs. “I’m not sure. Maybe Nagaina.”

He snorts. “Does that make the seedship Nag?”

They both smile. Camille does, anyway. Young’s smile looks more like a wince.

 

On off on off. What is she missing?

“You’re hurting us,” Camille says to the ceiling. “Do you understand? You’re hurting us. We want to help you – I want to help you. I want to understand. Please. Please talk to me.”

On off on off. It never stops.

Camille drinks a lot of tea, but the amount of caffeine it contains is inadequate. Of course, it still soothes her, but there is something missing.

Tea can’t soothe her while she’s asleep.

 

She lights the stove and puts it out with her bare hands. On off. She turns the microwave on. She…she reaches for the knife block.

“Come then, Nagaina. Come and fight with me!”

She puts the knife to her neck. She’s in the bathroom now, turning the tap on. The microwave beeps from the kitchen. The knife is against her throat.

She looks in the mirror, and the shape she sees is not her. She turns the tap off. She is alone alone alone alone

“You shall not be a widow long.”

 

Camille has one perfect night of dreamless sleep. It is almost more terrifying than nightmares.

 

Camille switches breakers on and off, and suddenly it ends – there is no sense of satisfaction, no closure. Just a sudden jolt, and her lucidity does not wake her up.

She walks away from the kitchen and to her computer. She’s not sure why she turns it on, only that she must. It is a compulsion as strong as the one that made her turn things on and off endlessly for months. She turns on the computer, some strange mess of parts that looks nothing like any computer she’s ever seen in her life, and she runs a diagnostic.

Instead of any progress bar, she sees herself. Her own face, blurry at first, but increasingly detailed. She can see every line and pore and hair. She watches herself, the face on the monitor calm and serene, while her reflection screams.

Then, _finally_ , she wakes.

She fights her way out of bed. She is suffocating. She –

She’s okay.

She’s starting to understand.

 

Camille sits on the floor beside her bed, swaddled in animal hide. Her face itches where the tears are drying, but she doesn’t bother to wipe them off.

“I want to help you,” she says. It’s a whisper; she almost can’t recognize her own voice. It’s not the volume that matters.

“I want to help you,” Camille says. “You need to understand: you’re not alone, and neither am I.”

Somehow she knows she’ll be having the dream again. It’s alright. At least now she has some idea of what it means, of what she needs to do. It’s easier when she has a goal.

“It’s okay,” she tells Destiny. God only knows if the ship is really listening. “I’ll keep repeating it until you understand.”

She has to lead by example, after all. Who else will?


End file.
